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Snyder is elected mayor by 65 votes

Our press deadline forced us to be hesitant in yesterday’s election story, but now we can say, by a margin of just 65 votes, Councilman Marc Snyder has been elected the new mayor of Manitou Springs.

Snyder said opponent Rick Barry had called him to concede the race late Tuesday evening, and that both had agreed to work to bring the community together, healing the rift between business and residential interests in the town.

“We’re facing a pretty dire budget situation right now,” Snyder said of the budget shortfall of about $270,000 the city is currently grappling with. “Even though 2D, our relief from our charter’s capital reserve requirement passed, that’s a one-year bandage. We still have long-term financing and long-term revenue challenges. My number one priority is to find a way to diversify our revenues and to make it a more sustainable Manitou Springs — economically and in many other ways, too.”

Snyder said Manitou had managed to avoid real economic problems up until this point, but that those days were over.

“Over the last couple years, we’ve done about all of the trimming that we can do,” he said. “We’ve managed to put off training for employees, and other smaller things. But really, there’s nothing left. There’s been all kinds of talk about how we’re going to address this. I’ve been calling for a sustainable funding committee. It’ll take all parts of the community to come up with a citywide plan, and then get busy and active.”

Snyder also said he hoped Matt Carpenter would be sworn into office at the next council meeting so that the residents of Ward 3 would have representation as soon as possible.